“Mom!” Lanie screamed from the doorway. “Stop!”
My sister’s voice seemed to bring our mother back to reality, and she immediately loosened her grasp on me. I fell to the ground, choking and gasping. Lanie ran to fetch me a glass of water, but our mother simply began picking up the flowers that had scattered when the vase had dropped. In the end, I learned my lesson: I should have eased my way back into solid foods, and by the time I had returned to my room, I felt ill once more. It was two more days before I could consume anything other than clear liquids.
Wiping my mouth in the Three Sisters restroom, I stared hard into the mirror. My mother’s dark hair and pale blue eyes stared back at me. The physical resemblance to our mother was uncanny; what else might we have inherited from her? I thought of Lanie throwing the pitcher, her eyes wild and unfocused. Was there something more sinister lurking beneath the surface?
Later that night, I was startled awake by my buzzing phone. 2:32 glowed on the clock radio; Caleb groaned in his sleep. I had cleaned myself up at the restaurant and, after telling everyone I was fine despite the memory now pulsing insistently in my brain, we’d driven home and fallen right into bed.
“Hello?” I whispered into the phone.
“Josie?” Lanie’s voice sounded muted and far away. “Are you sleeping?”
I had forgotten how vulnerable my sister could sound in the predawn hours. Two o’clock had always been her witching hour, when she would whisper across the gap between our beds how much she missed our father, our mother, our bond, our life. The first few such confessionals had left me hopeful, thinking she was returning to the sister I had once known and loved. But then, as always, morning came and she once again armored herself with black clothing, blacker eyeliner, and bad attitude.
“Lanie? What is it?”
“First the pearls. Does that mean anything to you?”
The disjointed phrase and the faint hint of a slur harkened back to those earlier calls and suggested she was not entirely sober. “Have you been drinking?”
“I can’t sleep. That phrase is stuck in my head, and I can’t remember where it came from. First the pearls. I’m associating it with Mom, but I can’t remember when or where she might’ve said it.”
“If she said it at all.”
“Right. If she said it at all.” Lanie sighed in frustration. “I feel like it’s right there, just out of reach. Every time I’m about to get my hands on it, it fades away. I hate how jumbled my memories of Mom have become.”
My heart beating in my mouth, I asked, “What about your other memories? Are they jumbled, too?”
“What do you mean?”
She sounded genuinely befuddled, but I pressed forward anyway. “How certain are you about anything? About any of the things that you think you remember?”
My sister was quiet, and I thought for a moment that she had hung up.
“Lanie?”
“Do you remember the time that Mom gave us that English test?” she asked. “The one where we had to diagram sentences? And you cheated off my paper?”
“Huh? No. Lanie, I never cheated.”
“You must have. I was always better at English than you, how else do you explain your perfect score?”
“Okay, fine. I cheated on an English test administered by our mother fifteen years ago. It was the only time I ever did it, and I felt terrible. So what?”
“So I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Even when I was sure that you’d cheated, I didn’t contradict you when you said you hadn’t. And when Mom accused you of cheating, I stood up for you.”
“That doesn’t—”
“You have to take care of the people you love,” she hissed. “Or you lose them.”
“What is that supposed—?” I started, but she had already disconnected the call.
I immediately called her back, but the call went straight to voicemail. Dread collecting in my chest, I almost called Adam, but then I reminded myself that inciting a reaction was Lanie’s raison d’être. I was simply out of practice in knowing how to respond.
Discussion thread on www.reddit.com/r/reconsideredpodcast, posted September 29, 2015
Episode 5—Lanie credibility (self.reconsideredpodcast)
submitted 4 hours ago by jennyfromtheblock I just listened to episode 5 and I think I have some concerns about the way that Poppy is using Lanie’s high school years to evaluate her credibility. These people are all saying that she had an attitude problem after her father was shot. Wouldn’t you feel the same way?
elmparkuser1 10 points 3 hours ago
But Josie didn’t react that way. She was on the soccer team and student council and ran around with the popular kids.
jennyfromtheblock 3 points 3 hours ago
So people react differently. I still think that Lanie’s reaction was totally within the realm of reason.
chapter 19
Caleb and I bought tickets for an 8:30 p.m. flight out of O’Hare, and we planned to leave Elm Park around four, allowing us plenty of time to drive to Chicago, return the rental car, and make our way through the TSA line. By three thirty, our bags were packed, Ellen had laden my arms with a stack of fashion magazines (the pages with haircuts she liked for me helpfully flagged), and I had promised Aunt A we would come back for Christmas. The one thing I had not been able to do was connect with Lanie. I had been calling all day without getting a response, and I was growing increasingly anxious. Her post-midnight phone call seemed like a portend. Something bad has happened.
The tenth time I mentioned Lanie within a span of so many minutes, Caleb handed me the keys to the rental car. “Why don’t you go on over there?”
“Thanks,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “That’s a good idea. I’d rather say goodbye to her in person anyway.”
I opened the front door, so focused on my sister that I nearly plowed over her daughter, who was reaching for the doorbell.
“Ann!” I said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Mom said I should come here and see you,” she said with a bright smile.
Unease rumbling in my stomach, I glanced up and down the street for evidence of Lanie. “Where is your mother?”
With her mother’s superlative talent for avoiding a question, Ann handed me a sticky envelope. “Mom asked me to give you this.”
My name was scrawled on one side of the envelope in smeared pencil, and the flap was sealed shut with jagged lengths of tape. An indistinct buzz of worry sounded in my ears, and my hands shook as I ripped open the envelope and extracted a sheet of notebook paper. The paper was dotted with coffee rings, the green-inked words scrawled in painfully familiar handwriting.
Josie-Posie,
it began, employing the nickname Lanie had used for me when we were kids.